Sex and Cigarettes
by rusty-tiffany
Summary: AU, Rachel reflects on her life. faberry oneshot.


The apartment smelled like sex and cigarettes.

You wake up first, like you always do, disentangle yourself from her as quietly as possible, pull on a pair of boxers and a tank top you find on the floor and walk across the room to find the bag you carelessly tossed aside the night before. You find it hidden behind the bright green oversized armchair in the corner that you hate but she love, and you dig out your pack of Djarum Black Cappuccinos. You grab your lighter, open the sliding glass door and step out onto the balcony into the crisp morning air. You light the cigarette and inhale deeply, feeling the burn in your throat before breathing out a stream of gray smoke. You know you really shouldn't be smoking, it's bad for your voice, but you like the calmness nicotine gives you and the repetitiveness of breathing in the smoke then blowing it out again. You keep telling yourself that you'll quit one of these days, but you know you probably won't. Besides, she told you once that she thinks it's kind of sexy.

You take another drag and lean on the railing, looking out over the city that's just waking up. New York City. The place you'd been dreaming of since you first heard your dads playing the original cast recording of A Chorus Line when you were just a baby. You knew you had the talent and the drive to make it on Broadway; you just needed the direction. So you spent your childhood and teenage years going to dance classes and vocal lessons and acting classes to perfect your technique, forgoing normal adolescent things like making friends and dating. You emerged high school mostly unscathed; people usually just ignored you, unless you were performing. You were accepted to Julliard, your first choice, but when you returned home for Thanksgiving your first year, you realized that you had no real friends to tell your fathers about or to invite home with you, nor had you taken any time to explore and get to know the city you were living in. You spent the nest few months going out to clubs and picking up attractive strangers in bars, none of who lasted more than night or two. At the end of the semester you opted to withdraw from Julliard, and spent the rest of the year waiting tables and moonlighting as a piano bar singer to pay the rent. It wasn't the life you thought you'd have, but for the first time in your life you had friends, people who listened to you talk rather than just sing, people who cared about your well-being and who looked out for you. It was at the encouragement of these friends that you applied to NYU a year later, choosing psychology over theater as your major. You could perform without a formal education, you reasoned, but you would be hard pressed to find a respectable job with a B.A. in musical theater. Besides, you were always fascinated by people and how they worked, so psychology seemed like a good choice. You wouldn't know just how good that choice would turn out to be for another two years, when you walked into your Child Developmental Psychology class and saw her.

At first, you didn't notice her. You were distracted by an entertaining text message from and of your former coworkers with whom you had remained close and bumped into a tan, good-looking boy with a mohawk. He smirked at you and made a lewd suggestion regarding the length of your skirt, causing you to roll your eyes at his blatant, pathetic attempt at a pick-up line. You were about to tell him exactly where you thought he should shove his "puckasaurus" when you caught a flash of yellow out of the corner of your eye. You turned to see what it was and saw a blonde sitting near the front of the room. You couldn't see her face, but her hair looked soft and fell in loose waves down her back. You moved around the guy and sat a few rows behind her, silently praying for her to turn so you could see her face. You spent the entire class staring at the back of her head, willing her to turn even the slightest bit so you could get a glimpse of her, but she never did. To this day you don't know what happened on that first day of class, you were so mesmerized by this girl. You eagerly awaited the next class so you could see her again, but she wasn't there. You figured maybe she was sick or something and waited for the next one, but she wasn't there either. After four more classes spent looking for her only to find her absent, you gave up, resigning yourself to the fact that you would never know who she was or even what she looked like.

A few months passed, the course ended and you'd forgotten all about the girl with the pretty blonde hair. It was summertime and you weren't taking any classes, so you went back to your old waitressing job to earn some extra cash. You'd become somewhat well known as a piano bar singer and had landed a few small Off-Off-Broadway roles, but nothing really significant. Still, the work paid well enough for you to afford your own place, which turned out to be a blessing. You usually worked the dinner shift at the diner, the late night shift at the bar, then the early breakfast shift at the diner, causing your sleep schedule to become somewhat inverted, which would have been a pain in the ass to deal with if you had a roommate. On that particular day you had come in early to cover for a friend's shift, which you hated doing because it meant you barely got to sleep, but you owed her a favor so you agreed. It was around 2:30 in the afternoon when you saw it. The lunch crowd was mostly gone, just a few latecomers finishing off their meals before heading back to work, when you saw a flash of yellow. You turned and saw a blonde sitting alone at the corner table with her back to you. She had a cup of coffee and a plate of fried zucchini sticks in front of her, and was absently eating them as she flipped through a well-worn book. You asked your coworker about her and learned that she'd been coming in every day for about 2 weeks at the same time, sat at the same table, and ordered the same thing every time. She didn't speak to anyone, but she was always polite to the waiters and tipped well, so no one bothered her. You realized that this was your chance to finally see her, so you grabbed a coffee pot and headed over to her table.

You nearly dropped the pot when you actually got to see her face. You always had a feeling that she was pretty, but you were not prepared for just how breathtakingly beautiful the girl was. She wore minimal makeup, just enough to accentuate her cheekbones and her eyes, but she was still the most gorgeous thing you'd ever seen. You weren't generally a shy person, in fact you'd often been accused of being _too_ outgoing, but when she looked at you for the first time you lost all ability to speak. You just motioned the coffee pot towards her now-empty cup and she nodded, smiling softly before turning back to her book. You refilled her cup then stood there stupidly staring for a moment before remembering where you were and walking back to the counter. You immediately went to your boss and asked to switch your shifts so you were working lunch instead of breakfast; there was something about this girl that captivated you, and you wanted every opportunity to get to know her.

Gradually over the next few weeks you started talking to her when you went to refill her coffee, until you spent so much time talking that your boss yelled at you to pay attention to other customers. You learned her name (Quinn), how old she was (23, just a year older than you), where she was from (born in Savannah, Georgia, but moved around a lot as a kid and was now living seven blocks from you) what she did (she'd just graduated NYU with a degree in English and was currently interning at a small publishing company), and where she disappeared to after that first day of class (she wasn't actually taking it, she went to take notes for a friend who had to miss it). She often had to stay late at her office organizing manuscripts and files to be read and evaluated the next day, but every night she came to watch you sing in the bar, and she always bought you a drink when you finished your set. The bar was closer to your apartment, so she would walk you back before continuing on to her own apartment. She quickly became the most important person in your life, and you knew you were falling for her, even though you were still technically just friends. You both knew there was something else there but neither of you wanted to rush things, so you just let it be despite your decidedly non-platonic feelings for her. Eventually you decided to just go for it; either it was going to happen or it wasn't, there was no use pretending that there was nothing between you anymore. She walked you home like she always did, but instead of saying goodbye like you normally would, you invited her to come upstairs. She didn't hesitate to agree, and as you were fumbling with your keys outside your door, she kissed you.

She stayed over that night, but you didn't sleep together. You talked and kissed and got everything out in the open, and you asked her to be your girlfriend while cuddling in bed together. You had sex for the first time a few nights later, after she surprised you by interrupting your set and singing First Day of My Life by Bright Eyes, one of your favorite songs. You exchanged I Love You's that night too, and it remains one of your favorite memories.

That was eight years ago. Your relationship hasn't been perfect, but it's been good. You fall more and more in love with her every day, even after so many years, and you're positive that you don't want to ever be with anyone but her. You take another drag of your cigarette, then turn to look at her still-sleeping form. Her blonde hair is loose and splayed over the pillow, her naked body tangled in the sheets. She has your pillow clutched tightly against her, a substitute for you that she started unconsciously using about six months into your relationship. She looks so peaceful, so relaxed, so happy, that you want to get your camera so you'll always have this picture of her, but you can't stop looking at her. She's your whole world, and even after nearly a decade together you still have to pinch yourself sometimes to remind yourself that this is really your life.

She stirs and half wakes up, blinking a few times until her eyes focus and she sees you watching her. She asks what time it is; you look at the Lion King digital clock that sits on your bedside table, a replica of the one she had as a kid that she insisted on buying, and tell her that it's 6:22 in the morning. She groans softly (you think it's the cutest sound you've ever heard) and tells you to come back to bed. You smile and put your cigarette out, dropping it into the ashtray you leave outside. You crawl back into bed with her and she kisses you, moaning a little at the lingering taste of her favorite flavor clove on your lips. She cuddles into your chest (even though she's actually four inches taller than you, you're always the big spoon. You make her feel safe and protected, she tells you), and you kiss the top of her head. You're certain that there is nowhere else you would ever want to be than right here, with your arms wrapped around the woman you love and her warm breath tickling your collarbone.

Your apartment might reek of sex and cigarettes, but all you can smell is the subtly sweet strawberry scent of her shampoo. As you drift back off to sleep, all you can think is that you are the luckiest girl in the entire world, that this incredible, talented, beautiful person accepted a ring that tells the rest of the world to back off, cause she wants nothing more than to spend the rest of her life right there next to you.


End file.
